U2’s The Edge talks up food as an anti-cancer weapon
THE LEAD guitarist of U2, the popular rock band playing in the Washington area this week, has more on his mind than music. In 2006, The Edge’s 7-year-old daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia, something he says sent him “into a complete tailspin”. Sian recovered and is now aged 19.
The experience heightened the legendary musician’s interest in health and cancer, especially in angiogenesis, which focuses on the formation of new blood vessels. In recent years, several anti-angiogenesis drugs have been developed to disrupt the blood supply that cancers need to grow.
Yet The Edge, whose real name is David Evans, is convinced that certain foods can play a similar role, and he’s pressing for more research. He’s a board member of the Angiogenesis Foundation, a Massachusetts-based non-profit headed by William Li.
Interest in using food as an anti-cancer weapon is intense among consumers looking to reduce risks. But the idea that foods such as green tea or blueberries can starve tumours is controversial – “unsettled science”, says Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society.
The cancer society avoids saying that any particular food will ward off the disease, although it stresses that eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables is linked to reduced risk. Still, Brawley is enthusiastic about The Edge’s emphasis on a healthy diet, saying the recommendations could help combat obesity, which is linked to an increased possibility of cancer.
Similarly, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins praises The Edge’s interest in angiogenesis. He also notes, however, that “there’s no definitive evidence” of certain foods being anti-angiogenic.
During his visit to Washington, The Edge and Li visited Capitol Hill on Monday to argue for more research on the issue. They also talked to the Post. The following has been edited for length and clarity:
Q: How did your daughter’s experience affect you?
The Edge: When my daughter was first diagnosed with leukaemia I was… sent into a complete tailspin. The good news is that chemotherapy protocols are very well understood and the success rate is high. So you don’t need to try anything different. Dietary changes offered additional support to combat the disease.
What I really felt acutely, having brought my daughter through this treatment, is we can do better than chemotherapy. It’s brutal, it’s very crude; you basically are killing cancer cells at a slightly higher rate than you are killing normal cells. As a strategy, it seemed like a blunt instrument.
When I discovered the angiogenesis approach, I thought: “This is part of the future.”
Q: How are you trying to promote that approach?
The Edge: We’re communicating with scientists, talking to government officials… We’re just trying to encourage greater interest in this area. The emphasis surely has to be on focusing more on prevention, and angiogenesis and diet is an obvious place to look.
Li: We want to use tools of biotechnology to find out how foods work in the body. This is almost a redefinition or reconceptualisation of nutrition itself, away from macro- and micronutrients to ask: “What happens to foods when they encounter human cells?”
Q: What is the evidence that specific foods might protect people from the disease?
The Edge: It’s really compelling when you start to see in a petri dish that these foods are really having an effect which in some cases rivals pharmacology. What we really need is for the government to step in and fund this research.
Li: One of our first priorities is to systematically study whole, unprocessed foods using laboratory assays traditionally used for drug discovery. Q: What do you eat? The Edge: I eat berries every day and whole food. I eat foods with anti-angiogenic properties. – The Washington Post